Import Postscript - Macromedia Freehand

[bbora]

Hi
New user: apologies if answer is "obvious".
Searched the help, trolled the web, no luck. Searched the forum, no luck.
So new thread:(

Ahem.
I have a slew of postscript files: mechanical drawings, produced by our
technical illustrators in a piece of software called ideas.
So they print to PS for us, and these postscript files were imported into
Designer 8. We must abandon Designer, and I am on record as saying we need to
produce EPS. So is it going to be Illustrator or FH? So I'm testing Freehand...

FH MX doesn't appear to "import" PS. It displays as a big empty box.
Tried the various options in Ctrl-U>Import.
FYI, I'm a technical Writer, so FrameMaker/PDF/PS is my job description.

What am I doing wrong (because I cannot, simply cannot believe that FH MX
can't import "standard" postscript.)

blake

[bbora]

I'll reply to this myself.
Of course, PS is not exactly a "free" standard, is it. So if I distill the PS
to PDF, then I can import the PDF to FH, and the subselect curser can grab the
very nicely rendered PDF source, and of course, it's all vectorial..
Happy ending. But no stars for me :(

[Odysseus]

In article <cfdgjr$p9i$1forums.macromedia.com>,
"bbora" <webforumsusermacromedia.com> wrote:

> I have a slew of postscript files: mechanical drawings, produced by our
> technical illustrators in a piece of software called ideas.
> So they print to PS for us, and these postscript files were imported into
> Designer 8. We must abandon Designer, and I am on record as saying we need to
> produce EPS. So is it going to be Illustrator or FH? So I'm testing
> Freehand...
>
> FH MX doesn't appear to "import" PS. It displays as a big empty box.
> Tried the various options in Ctrl-U>Import.
> FYI, I'm a technical Writer, so FrameMaker/PDF/PS is my job description.
>

FreeHand *can* import EPSFs, but not in editable form. It may be also
able to treat other kinds of PostScript file the same as an EPSF,
depending on what's in the header comments. You can transform &c. placed
EPS images but not edit the contents; they should still work fine on any
PostScript printer or RIP (including Acrobat Distiller). The reason
you're just seeing an 'X-box' is presumably that the file you imported
has no preview -- or if it does, it's in a format that FH doesn't
understand -- but whether or not there's a visible preview has no effect
on PS printing.

--
Odysseus